The Kweendom of Abstraction

questions

Every day…we wake up, turn on a TV, a faucet, plug in an iron, a blow dryer…and go about our day. We enjoy our cell phones, laptops and iPods…thinking very little of what makes it all tick.

As, I was in the kitchen tonight…I became absorbed in thought. As I listened to the faucet’s flow turn to noise in my ear…I asked myself a question. “What if this all stopped tomorrow…what would I do? If my faucet ran dry…the electrical outlets went cold…the fridge quit humming…what would I do? How would we as a land of many amenities and luxuries, respond to the shutting down of resources. No more clean water, no more convenient shopping for foods and textiles. All that would be left are houses that serve no other purpose than to protect us from the elements. Do you think we would or could adapt? Do you think we’d be open to learning how to start from scratch? Learning agriculture and doing things by hand instead of expecting a machine to do it for us…what would happen to our land?

I see what happens when people are disconnected from the Internet for some reason or another. It’s like crack. Yet, what if that life wasn’t just a lapse of bill payment, technical difficulty or lack of hardware? What if it were forced onto us by way of some catastrophic event that leveled our current way of living to the ground. Could you survive? Would you WANT to survive?

Could you chase down your own yak ass ala National Geographic? Could you see yourself, building fires, using buckets as toilets…or instead of bringing back SEXY, you brought back the outhouse…scary, huh?

I remember watching The Jetsons and wanting my dinner to come out of a maching piping hot from a small box (wait…that’s a microwave). Well, how about the moving sidewalk? (shit, that’s a treadmill). Okay, what about the car that turns into a briefcase? HA! Anyway, I remember wanting to live in the future…and now that we’re kinda sorta here…I wonder how quickly we could go backwards. (Remember the special they did where the Flintstones switched places with the Jetsons?). I wonder if we’d turn on each other out of boredom…victims of indoctrinated ADHD. I wonder if we’d die due to lack of adaption. I’m sure there would be a group of weaker people who’d die from fear and confusion…just as I’m sure there would be a group of outdoorsy types who’d be chopping wood, building fires, and creating perfectly sound huts ala Gilligan’s Island.(Do you all remember the PERFECTLY built huts, tables, chairs, cycling CAR, etc. that they built on that island? The Professor was the BOMB, lol)

I, digress…again. ~damn that short attention span~

I wondered what would become of this society if all that we knew was razed to the foundation and we were forced to re-build society. How would the pampered people of NOW deal with a very BARE life?

I’ve been reading a lot of blogs lately and a lot of people are having the same problem. The running theme through a lot of these blogs are about situations in peoples lives or being at a point in their lives where they feel unfulfilled. I ask myself everyday if the life that I’m living is the one I deserve. I know how people say, “Oh…Well, I do THIS for people and THAT for people…so, why do I suffer?” But, the question is…do we CHOOSE to suffer? Do we find ourselves in seemingly no win situations and accept it? Or do we really have no choice (considering all options have been weighed).

Are we grounded by fear? Fear of change? Fear of loneliness? Fear of perception? Are we afraid that if we move from this spot that we’ll lose our seat? That we’ll go off in search of other things and find out that the grass wasn’t even grass…but rough Astroturf only to return to where we came from and find the spot filled. Do we fear that going off into a frontier undiscovered, that we’ll fall victim to it’s environment and fall flat on our faces?

I hear people say all of the time, that they’d rather try and potentially fail than to never try and remain a failure for sure. Venturing out and going beyond your comfort zone is supposed to be a good thing. Seeing and learning and coming into yourself is what people strive for. It’s what brings us that one step closer to God’s purpose for us…so why the fear? Again…I ask. If you (meaning people…mainly self) are afraid to move forward out of fear…what is it that you deserve?